By Dr. David Whitehouse, the Global Warming Policy Foundation
Today’s Times says, “Nasa analysis showing record global warming undermines the skeptics.” However, a closer look at the information which the Times bases its headline on shows that a combination of selective memory and scientific spin play a large role in arriving at it.
The conclusion is based on a new paper written by James Hansen and submitted to Reviews of Geophysics. The paper released by Hansen has not been peer reviewed, and he admits that some of the newsworthy comments it contains may not make it past the referees.
Hansen claims that, according to his Gisstemp database, the year from April 2009 to April 2010 has a temperature anomaly of 0.65 deg C (based on a 1951 – 1980 average) making it the warmest year since modern records began. It is a fractionally warmer than 2005 he says, although an important point to be made is that statistically speaking, taking into account the error of measurement and the scatter of previous datapoints, it is not a significant increase.
The Nasa study said: “We conclude that there has been no reduction in the global warming trend of 0.15-0.20 deg C per decade that began in the late 1970s.”
This is a selective use of a trend line that joins a datapoint in the late 1970’s with the most recent one ignoring the details in the data inbetween. The fact is that one could have taken a datapoint a decade ago and tied it to the same point in the late 1970’s and deduced an even greater rise in temperature per decade. So another way of describing the data is that the rate of increase has actually declined.
Another point to be made is that an increase of 0.2 deg C per decade, if it is real and sustained, is 2.0 deg C per century, an increase not that unprecedented in the climatic record of the past 10,000 years, and substantially less than the widespread predictions of a higher increase.
In the Times article, the Met Office in the form of Vicky Pope, said that their data showed that the past year was “just below” the 12-month record achieved in 1998. Remember, 2009 annual temperature was, according to the Met Office, statistically indistinguishable from every year between 2001–2008.
Vicky Pope then says that Nasa might be right because the Met Office had underestimated the recent warming detected in the Arctic! There are few weather stations in the Arctic and the Met Office, unlike Nasa, does not extrapolate where there are no actual temperature readings. It is curious to hear this given the criticism that Met Office scientists have expressed in the past about the way the Gisstemp dataset is pieced together this way!
Vicky Pope does say however that, “the Met Office continues to predict that 2010 is more likely than not to be the warmest calendar year on record, beating the 1998 record.” This is also a curious statement since she adds that Met Office analysis showed that the four months to the end of April were probably the third warmest for that time of year.
In only the past few weeks however the Met Office has been saying something different.
In the Sunday Times of May 23rd Vicky Pope says that 2010 could be the hottest year on record due to the current El Nino. She also says that the 2010 January – April temperature was the seventh warmest on record meaning that out of the past ten years (allowing for the 1998 El Nino) most of them have been warmer during the January – April period, though not statistically so.
In the Sunday Times article Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, adds what is missing from the article mentioned earlier: “We have seen rapid warming recently, but it is an example of natural variation that is associated with changes in the Pacific rather than climate change.”
In the Times article poor journalism is compounded with scientific spin from James Hansen’s article to give a misleading impression about the state of the science and what the data actually shows. It will be interesting to see if 2010 breaks any records in the Gisstemp or Met Office datasets. If it does the next question to ask would be, is it statistically significant as one would expect the occasional high point due to errors of measurements causing measured datapoints being scattered around a constant mean (the case post 2001). It would be highly misleading and scientifically fraudulent to look at one datapoint that is higher than the rest yet within the error bars of the previous years and say, “look, a record.” This will not undermine the skeptics but science itself.
Feedback: david.whitehouse@thegwpf.org
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I keep hearing about the warmest 1st four month on record but here in the N.E. of England we had snow on at least some days each month for 6 months from Nov through April. Nobody, including some octogenarians can remember this happenning before!!
The currently developing La Nina will drop GISTemp down to about 0.400C by the end of the year.
(It will still probably be the highest GISS annual temperature record – close to 2005 – but then one should consider what stations and ocean indices are used and how those have been adjusted over time). GISTemp is adjusted every month and that includes temperature numbers from 1880.
Yep with the Central & Eastern Pacific Upper-Ocean (0-300 m) Weekly Heat Content Anomalies dropping past a negative 1 degree centigrade better grab some headlines while they are available.
Nobody believes anything the climate scientists say anymore, and nobody could care less if the atmospheric temperature is going up a fraction of a degree or going down a fraction of a degree. And nobody believes a word about any climate scientist’s predictions about climate change. To give you some idea about how little the public cares about this, the latest pronouncements from Hansen were not reported in the majority of pro-AGW press or on TV.
If you can’t even get your own supporters to report what you’re saying, then you are finished.
Here in NW Calif, we are still getting our twice a week rain showers and more snow accululating in the high mountains.
One look at Unisys tells the story of a very cool North Pacific. We have not has a day here past 82 degrees, and it’s June already.
Most deciduous trees were past a month late, and some are just now budding out.
The President is more concerned with his Energy Tax Plan and taking over BP (after trying them) than he is about the plight of Gulf residents, which tells me that the story in the Times is a shamless plug for more tax & spend.
Here comes La Nina.
I really feel sorry for the poor folks having to live through the extreme heat necessary to offset the cooler-than-usual spring we seem to be having in my part of the globe. I keep picturing some poor polar bear or penguin dying from heat exposure while I enjoy the cool weather.
Another thought: Wasn’t it recently reported that the Northern Hemisphere experienced its most extensive snow cover in….many years? Again, where is this unprecedented heat?
Must be something wrong with my internal thermometer then because I shivered through most of April.
Measuring global mean temperature trends is futile endeavour in determining what’s happening to climate. We need to be able to measure Earth’s energy budget before we will know what’s happening at any moment in time.
There are lies, damn lies and GISS temp!
Since when were we using the financial year april-april as a criterion? And just how much good will it do the cause if they tell the public who lived through this last winter that it was record warm?
Oh, yeah, the temperature’s hot where the thermometers are not.
A lot of people carry around with them a bothering thought in the back of their minds. How can all other monitored solar bodies as the moon, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn’s moons warm over the last decades without the Earth to also warming in parallel.
If the Martian polar caps melted (or more properly decreased) as we here on Earth experienced the same polar ice decrease phenomena, won’t we not have to wait until the Martian polar caps regain their former ice area before we can say anything about Earth’s polar ice area?
Keep your eyes on Mars’s polar ice caps.
If they rebound, the moon and other monitored solar bodies cool, and Earth does not respond in parallel, then even I would have to admit that then we really have something to talk about in the tenths of a degree.
Also, thank you Ron for an very interesting post, it helps to keep one’s mind in motion!
Recent 2010 temepratures were on top of the weather phenomenon an El Nino contributing several tenths of a degree.
2005 was not.
There is no way to regard 2010 to be warmer than 2005 from a clomate science perspective..
Realclimate is very quick in adjusting temperatures upwards during La Ninas, but here they, Hansen and Pope are silent again.
This is further evidence, that the wrong people are employed at the top of climate science institutions.
I find it astounding that anyone can, with a straight face, announce that 2010 is shaping up to be the hottest ever. Hottest ever where? If this is hottest average they are talking about it must be incredibly hot somewhere, but nobody seems to know where.
I live in London and it’s been pretty cold most of this year so far. We had a severely cold January and February all over the UK and, apart from a few recent hot days, it has not been particularly warm. Spring was definitely late this year, which is not what you would expect for a ‘record hot year’. I have just returned from a holiday in California and everywhere I went – from San Francisco down to Los Angeles – people were apologising to me for the indifferent weather, ‘it’s usually much warmer at this time of year’ was what they all said.
So, I ask again how can anyone speak or write this complete rubbish about record high temperatures and expect to be believed? Or is it just that there is somewhere in the world where the mercury has been off the scale for the past 6 months?? I don’t think so.
Hansen needs this record how ever he gets it, for in his Global Temperature Trends: 2007 Annual Summation he predicted: “…barring the unlikely event of a large volcanic eruption, a record global temperature clearly exceeding that of 2005 can be expected within the next 2-3 years.” This prediction was repeated in the last GISS Global Temperature Trends Annual Summation at the end of 2008. There was no summation at the end of 2009.
We are now into the 3rd year of this prediction and apparently coming out of an el nino peak. So how can we justify the April to April year? It is the UK financial year, which itself derives from the cult of Mary in the middle ages, when the Annunciation of the El Nino — his divine conception, not his birth — was considered the beginning. This matriarchal year allows the build up (the Advent) and the decline (to Good Friday) of an el nino event to be captured in a single year.
rw says:
“…trying to bring Global Warming into existence by a collective act of will.”
Yes, next we’ll have Sweat Lodge chanting and a pilgrimage to a Sedona vortex.
In case you want to help, here is a map.
http://www.lovesedona.com/images/vnetmap3.gif
With these GWRist posts what Anthony achieves is making our sensitive livers to produce big amounts of bile and keep the fun going. Need a lot of piridoxine (vit.B6) and dextrose now.
That heading it is just sadistic, it’s like echoing Jimmy “Trains” or Dr. Mannsimian. Wow!
When El Nino ends, it’s global warming. When El Nino begins, it’s global warming. When El Nino doesn’t exist, the long term trends prove global warming. When El Nino does exist, it proves global warming.
It’s like listening to a single tone frequency on a frequency generator and having someone keep telling you that every part of the sine wave indicates a devastating long term trend caused by a wasteful power supply.
If it’s been so warm so far this year, why are all the flowers in my garden a month or so later than usual? Silence from MSM gardeners: they have been fashionably pushing Mediterranean planting in recent years: prepare for hot and dry conditions! In England. I lost two shrubs to the cold this winter and others must have too.
Jon P,
re “Lindbergh Field varies in temperature a lot less than other areas of the county as it next to the bay.”
Yes, but then several coastal airports have the same issues, e.g. LAX, San Francisco, Seattle/Tacoma. The point is that it’s an airport, with miles (literally) of thick concrete pavement, much high-temperature jet exhaust, and more than likely it has grown substantially over the years. As Anthony has (correctly) pointed out, a worse place for long-term temperature measurement could hardly be found.
Remember: After they get their objective nobody will hear again about any “Warmest Season on record” anymore. Afterwards this blog will have to focus on the next issue: The Landscheidt Minimum and changing science paradigm to a brand new one.
After just going through the most severe Winter I can remember here in Devon(UK), in which most of my Hogs froze or became diseased, the last thing we need here is to follow with Hot records, as this only adds to the problems we have on our Hog Farm to raise the new Piglets we need to make a living on Bacon and Sausages.
We are still waiting for the government to pay out for the losses we just had, and being simple farming folk from devon, we don’t know alot about the exact science, but we are getting messages here for the last few years we are getting hotter and hotter. But the message is confusing for us basic farm folk who can’t comprehend it. Do we rear hardier Cold loving beasts in the future, or make ready for needing hardier species to raise for a Warming world. But the science we are told is not the reality, and it can be so confusing for us folk down in Devon who still live quite isolated from the modern world. We only recently got mobile internet (only works a few days a week) and we still use the cesspit here, even.
Mari Warcwm says:
June 3, 2010 at 2:01 pm
If it’s been so warm so far this year, why are all the flowers in my garden a month or so later than usual?
That is because your flowers are out of date: If they would be VIRTUAL (generated by models) they would flower all the time. Your MET office guys cultivate these in their computers and see them flower in their screens.
How can there be any credibility in any of the global temperature dialogue when there is such a wide spread in just the last ten years between the various temperature data sets .
Least square trend line slopes per Wood for Trees data
JAN 2000 to April 30/2010[124 months or about 10 years]
HADCRUT 3vgl 0.00428C/YEAR
RSS 0.00895C/YEAR
UAH 0.01289C/YEAR
GISS 0.01556C/YEAR
The difference is almost 3.6 times between low and high. The first thing the scientific community needs to do is to fix the data sets. A quote from the paper referenced below states the case well.
Hence perhaps the central policy implication of the
cross-examination conducted above is a very concrete and yet perhaps surprising one:
public funding for climate science should be concentrated on the development of better,
standardized observational datasets that achieve close to universal acceptance as valid
and reliable. We should not be using public money to pay for faster and faster computers
so that increasingly fine-grained climate models can be subjected to ever larger numbers
of simulations until we have got the data to test whether the predictions of existing
models are confirmed (or not disconfirmed) by the evidence.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1612851#
Hansen was never right, why does anybody list to him?
June 6, i was able to turn off the furnace for the 1st time since i turned it on last fall.